I made this as a surprise present for my Dad’s 70th birthday in September. He was planning on moving from the dirty built up East End of London to rural Normandy soon after. The picture shows me, my brothers and my son all whirling and diving like little leaves from the city into the yellow autumn trees for him. It isn’t a very good photo as my good camera broke just as I tried to get a record of the piece. It is a sort of picture within a picture. I started putting it together on the floor and then realised I had to move it onto backing paper in order to finally get it into a frame. I had to take it all to bits to do that. In order for me to remember where I had placed everything I needed to take a photo for reference. This photo then became the base of the piece from which everything else kaleidoscopically grew. There are little junctures of time in there like my son’s first dive and my brother posing with his bike after winning his first bike race. The towerblock is actually one I took a picture of in Argentina, the trees are from Richmond on a cold February day and the rest is from history. I used sharp sewing scissors and extra strong Pritt. That’s it. I did another one for a good friend last month. I might post that up soon. The yellow trees feature in that one too.
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